Drew Kadel

I was baptized at 6 and couldn't receive communion until I was confirmed at 14. Not what I would advocate. But the variance in practice really reflects our various circumstances. When you're baptized into the community, communion is appropriate. But a time of preparation for communion is very good.

It was always his trajectory. My wife was almost hired by a paper in Orange County, NY where Thompson had worked before he found his writing niche. The publisher fired him because he destroyed a candy machine in their offices:"You have great talent as a writer, but..."

I am very positive about Mamdani. However, that's partly because I see his trajectory resembling AOC's--pragmatic and engaging with the main stream. That alienates those whose pure identity is "leftist" but it doesn't tank overall popularity so much.

I used to handle interlibrary loans for a public library. ILL is a magnificent expression of the idea that readers deserve books, and books deserve readers. It’s libraries everywhere pooling their resources for the benefit of everyone.

Killing IMLS could have killed ILL.

This is great news. 📚

TRUMP [after spending 5 minutes with Zohran]: surplus value, it’s a very wonderful thing, very wonderful, and they’re stealing it. Can you believe that?

We’re going to be looking very strongly at the bourgeoisie, what they’re up to

We are not serious people. No one even asked us to fight for democracy - they asked us to give up a tenth of a percent of our income and we said that’s too much. We have chosen decline and chosen it with gusto

Therapy's not the thing they need. It's values (as opposed to simply playing games without regard for what's right or wrong). A therapized nihilist is still a nihilist.

“The Epstein case is fascinating precisely because it collapses those distinctions… an actual elite network, operating through personal relationships and mutual protection, flying on private jets and meeting on an exclusive tropical island — more or less what the paranoid style typically imagines.”

BTW, there’s a code on the publisher’s website www.wipfandstock.com which gives 50% off during November. So the book is less than $10. (You don’t have to have anything to do with the conference referenced to use it)

Trump if Mamdani was WH chief of staff:

my main takeaway is it's crazy she's got her Christmas tree up already

Mamdani probably got home, turned to his wife, and let out the longest, loudest “this fucking guy” of all time

Mamdani is certainly aware of this. You could see it in the way he framed everything.

post leftist intercept comment section types are just so eager to buy into the delusion that fascism can be negotiated with

Trump is shallow and was briefly charmed by a charismatic man, by tomorrow he'll be threatening to nuke woke daycare centers again

there is no coalition with fascism

But it didn't work.

In an early draft I toyed with a satirical style, imagining a goofy priest intern, dressed in caassock and surplice, trying to baptize an orca at Sea World using a small seashell (as is common in conservative Episcopal churches) and just getting soaked without getting any holy water on the whale.

Played him like a fiddle.

It is great!
(Trump is changeable by the minute, but Zohran played this perfectly)

Absolutely. But as Rev Al Sharpton said, "With Trump you can never tell, half the time he will be gracious and charming and the other half he'll attack you with pure nastiness.
Zohran handled him perfectly.

I’m gonna implore everyone here to take the W if only to experience the feeling again.

The Romans would have thought the guillotine totally inappropriate, since it was too efficient to accomplish the death by public torture—the entire point of crucifixion. For whales, all of this would be entirely meaningless. They live the bulk of their life under water—it’s the source of sustenance for them, not death. Not only do they not make tools in their regular habitat, but a cross wouldn’t achieve anything like its purpose underwater—bodies, whether cetacean or human, are too buoyant for gravity to succeed in its torture. Whales have their own joys and their own problems, I’m sure, but human stories, symbols, concepts, or sacraments are of no use to them. The ways in which the love of God is worked out among them is entirely their own and just as incomprehensible to us as ours are to them

more meaningful than our self-assertion that we are.7 The title of this book is a question: how do you baptize a whale? Unlike a zen koan, it does have an answer—you can’t baptize a whale. The fact that they are already immersed in water is only a small part of the problem.

Sorry.

It is true that Zohran's political technique and policy insight are MANY Wins Above Replacement. He's like a batter who can fight off the inside pitch and hit to the opposite field as well as pull the ball with power. Mostly he's likeable and seems trustworthy.

By the way, even when you have the PDF of the final typeset version in front of you, you can't tell how the book is going to look & feel when you go in to read it. I am VERY pleased with how that all worked out.

That's true, but even though he could still swish a three pointer when he was well over 50, Bill Bradley didn't have the juice to win the presidency when he ran--that charisma thing is intangible & Zohran just has it.

Photo of two copies of the book: How do you Baptize a Whale: An Encouragement to Compassion by Andrew Kadel, foreword by Rebecca Lyman. The top half is a photograph of two whales with light coming from above.

Author's copies finally arrived!
⚓
wipfandstock.com/979838525620...

Too many people don't want to admit that they've been charmed, they think they are purely rational actors and beyond being swayed by emotional factors. This also is delusional denial and pretty godammed stupid.

But, at least for the duration of the press conference, Trump clearly admired (and envied?) Mamdani and SAID that he agreed with him.

Mamdani found a way to make Trump agree with him! Watching Mamdani do politics is like watching Mohammed Ali boxing at his peak. Float like a butterfly and sting like a bee bay-bee!

Is it likely that there will be a permanently crewed base?